'Articles on mental health and suicide have been especially ubiquitous in the Anglosphere's elite-controlled mainstream press, in part because overseas wars are giving rise to a generation of emotionally fragile war veterans who are committing suicide in unprecedented numbers. Millions of citizens overseas afflicted by these wars suffer as well. To begin with these bureaucracies may seem innocent and even innovative. But over time it will become apparent that the UN is setting up some sort of worldwide mental health apparatus to evaluate people's emotional and intellectual stability. Worst case – if it gets that far – the UN will try to provide itself not only with the authority to evaluate people's mental competence but also the authority to send people to mental institutions and re-education camps if they are not sufficiently docile and open to the appropriate level of mind control.' -- How many fingers, Winston?

'Blackburn, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Fifth Amendment posed no barrier to his decryption order. The Fifth Amendment says that nobody may be "compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," which has become known as the right to avoid self-incrimination. "I find and conclude that the Fifth Amendment is not implicated by requiring production of the unencrypted contents of the Toshiba Satellite M305 laptop computer," Blackburn wrote in a 10-page opinion today. He said the All Writs Act, which dates back to 1789 and has been used to require telephone companies to aid in surveillance, could be invoked in forcing decryption of hard drives as well. Prosecutors in this case have stressed that they don't actually require the passphrase itself, and today's order appears to permit Fricosu to type it in and unlock the files without anyone looking over her shoulder. They say they want only the decrypted data and are not demanding "the password to the drive, either orally or in written form."'

'The unspoken truth behind the most terrifying novel in the world.' -- "Orwell was a murderer. Constant war – that's the constant war against the conscience that occurs in the soul of the murderer. The conscience has to be so overridden by this aggressive ego: O'Brien. O'Brien is the [false-self internalized father and dictator] part of Orwell that murdered, and the remaining shreds of his original [true-self] is Winston. The murder occurs before he writes the book and that's why Winston hasn't got a chance. ['Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.'] Winston is interested in the truth about the past...There is an independent self that wants to examine history but can't get any details, and that attempts to resist, and attempts to form a relationship with an outsider, with a skeptic, with someone who does understand evil and who judges the family... Big Brother. It's the family. He tries to have a relationship outside the family and the family destroys him for that."

'...from what might be called the Communications Security Administration (CSA), we can expect a 'no send' list. If you're on the list, you can't send or post messages, and no reasons will be given. They will be arbitrarily restricting your ability to connect with people remotely. Consider also the invasive screening process at airports. Everyone is treated as a potential terrorist, until they pass the invasive screening process. Similarly, every message anyone tries to send will be treated as a 'potential cyber threat', until it passes an invasive 'threat filter'. Google is already deploying such a filter, and calling it a spam filter. Air travel and the Internet have been the 'great global connectors', of people and of ideas. The thrust of 'security' measures has had little to do with terrorism, and everything to do with making 'connection' more and more difficult. WikiLeaks is indeed the 9/11 of the Internet.'

'Amazon's decision to abandon WikiLeaks sends out a clear message: you can publish what you like – as long as it meets with the government's approval -- As far as the law of contract is concerned, Amazon can do what it likes. But this isn't just about contracts any more. "While Amazon was within its legal rights," MacKinnon warns, "the company has nonetheless sent a clear signal to its users: if you engage in controversial speech that some individual members of the US government don't like… Amazon is going to dump you at the first sign of trouble."' -- Pointing finger is pointing at government.

Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death.

DO IT TO JULIA, NOT ME!

"Slaves attack each other for stepping out of line. The State is the willingness of your fellow slaves to attack you for pointing out the truth. If you want to be free, you simply have to stop associating with people who will attack you for pointing out the basic moral, economic and practical realities of our situation, of our lives. The State is your fellow slaves."

'The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future. The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.” The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online “momentum” for any given event.' -- TOMORROW. TERRORIST. WE KNOW. MAKE REPORT. THIS WARN YOU.

'[South Carolina's] “Subversive Activities Registration Act” is now officially on the books and mandates that “Every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States … shall register with the Secretary of State.” Of course, the right to overthrow a government that has become corrupt, abusive and completely unrepresentative of its electorate is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence – that’s how America came to be a Republic in the first place – advocating or teaching that the people should “control” the government via their elected representatives is a basic function of a democratic society, but this law effectively makes it a terrorist offense.' -- The War on Terror is a war on YOU

'One of the absurdities of the UK’s list of banned people, is that quite a few of those on the list, including Savage himself, had neither tried, nor intended, to enter the UK. This was because the list, compiled by Whitehall types using Google and a little help from the intelligence services, was never really a practical measure. It was, as Smith herself said at the time, a way to showcase ‘the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here’. ‘It’s a privilege to come to this country’, she continued: ‘There are certain behaviours that mean you forfeit that privilege.’ -- This shouldn’t be a surprise. A ban on unacceptable behaviour, on offensive speakers, is never a testament to the strength of a society’s norms and values. It is always its opposite, a sign of weakness.'

'Perhaps the most telling and frightening detail of the Chambers case is the explanation given by the arresting officer: "It is the world we live in." The world we live in is a surreal, incomprehensible collage of inflated authority and over-bearing bureaucracy which cannot differentiate between schoolboy humour and a death threat. Arrests like this one are an inevitable consequence of a society where paranoid risk aversion has run spectacularly out of control.' -- EGASSEM DRAWKCAB GNISSAP. EMIRCTHGUOHT. UOY NRAW SIHT.

'New words: #Extremist: Somebody that thinks differently than you. Anybody that has an opinion that differs from current government policy. This term allows politicians to speak of their rival's agendas without actually having to explain exactly what their rival's beliefs are. #Hate Crime: A real crime which is punished more severely because the person is also guilty of a Thoughtcrime. #Left and Right Wings: Terms that limit the range of expression when discussing issues. The idea that there are only 2 sides to every argument. These terms give the public the idea that there are only two possible sources of ideas, and that these two "opposing" sides represent the entire gambit of thought. #New World Order: A world in which all people live peacefully, under the control of the U.N. #Peace Process: A process which will ultimately lead to war. The process of getting oppressed people to shut the hell up and embrace their occupiers.'

'Video games depicting war have come under fire for flouting laws governing armed conflicts. Human rights groups played various games to see if any broke humanitarian laws that govern what is a war crime. The study condemned the games for violating laws by letting players kill civilians, torture captives and wantonly destroy homes and buildings. It said game makers should work harder to remind players about the real world limits on their actions.' -- How? By making a video game that simulates them instead? Oh, wait... -- '"[We] call upon game producers to consequently and creatively incorporate rules of international humanitarian law and human rights into their games."' -- Virtual Human Rights Act? LOL

HAHA! Gulag time.

'What seems to have lulled ... many ... clever people ... into their dangerous complacency is the belief that given the majority of world scientific opinion is backing AGW theory, it would be irresponsible for us non-scientists to disagree. What the Climategate scandal does is prove just how murky and unreliable this supposed scientific “consensus” really is. “Peer-reviewed”: it’s the magic phrase which – in their eyes – guarantees the reliability and credibility of their favoured scientists... -- Dr Tim Ball: "..he identified 42 people who were publishing together and also peer-reviewing each other’s literature."' -- 42. The answer to the universe and everything! I really wonder how people can have such disrespect for science. It is the ultimate philosophic 'crime against humanity'. No, never in my name. If science is a thought crime then I choose thoughtcrime!

'By first demanding that green views be put on a par with religion in the eyes of the law and by then suggesting that green views should be elevated above religion because they are ‘underpinned by science’, Nicholson not only debased religious belief but also expressed an ignorant attitude towards the scientific process. As Frank Furedi has pointed out on spiked: ‘Science emerged through an intellectual struggle to free humanity from the tyranny of sacred dogma… science depends on an open-minded and open-ended attitude towards experimentation and the testing out of ideas.’ Nicholson’s efforts to stamp out opposition to those who ‘believe in anthropogenic climate change’ is an expression of dogmatic thinking if ever there was one.' -- Back to the dark ages. It's quite shocking how far the neo-feudalism meme has spread. You'd think people would be weary of being manipulated as a useful idiot, but somehow an inflated sense of self importance takes its grip...

The perception IS the reality. That's the inherent danger of the immediate consenus-making ability of twitter and other realtime platforms. -- Brendan O'Neill: "Illiberal liberalism" "Emotional incontinence" Righteous indignation/enthusiasm. That's the inherent danger of immediate action/reaction/gratification as opposed to taking the time to think things through – "Boring, hard work," as Nick Cohen puts it. (As a #moralmaze tweeter said, links to in-depth resources provide the best alibi for "shallow" twitterhappy tweetstormers.) Nick Cohen: "There's a lot of utopianism. It's very shallow and very transient. A lot of it is apathetic. It's people affirming themselves." -- RE #moralmaze. It's not surprising to see tweeters so overly keen to defend any and every perceived threat to twitter, though it's not like its going away—calm down. Defending both their newly-felt right to be heard and the social/cultural capital they've built up over the years... TWITTER IS SERIOUS BUSINESS.

'There have always been people who have found reasons to take offence. A generation ago, protest was hard work. Now Facebook groups and trending topics on Twitter can, if they ignite, produce mass protests from nowhere. -- The ease of net communication explains why so much abuse appears in comments boxes. But it also undermines the authenticity of many mass protests. The targets feel as if they are on the receiving end of genuine popular feeling, when typically the anger directed against them is shallow and transient. -- A mob fighting a good cause is still a mob. To fight back, you need to remember that although the internet age is hugely expanding the number of complaints, the old rules still apply. Whether you are the owner of a tiny blog or the editor of a national newspaper, if someone points out an incorrect fact, you correct it; if someone challenges an argument, you argue back; and if someone says that you must think what they think, you ignore them.'

'...there was something gratuitous about what Brendan O’Neill described as the liberal cause-hunter’s ‘two-minute’ hate. All the commentaries, the blogs, the tweets – all seemed a little too desperate to voice their disapproval, to reveal how disgusted they were. It was a spectacle of feelings, a seething mass of self-affirming emotional incontinence, a carnival of first-person pronouns and expressions of hurt and proxy offence. I feel, therefore I am. -- ...important for the spleen-venters was the act of claiming the moral high-ground as offended, as hurt, as a determined victim of something that they no doubt searched out on the web. This act of searching out offence and proclaiming the depth of one’s feelings from online rooftops threatens free speech. ...the danger of such a vast explosion of offence-taking is that it inhibits, creating a ‘you-can’t-say-that’ culture in which one is scared to speak one’s mind, whether its contents are moronic or not.' -- THE THOUGHTPOLICE IS YOU

'This all seems part of the change in the British government seeing its role as representing people to seeing its role as managing people. -- "In most of my Crimint reports, I seem to be of interest to the police because I'm taking an interest in them. Much of their data is alarmingly inaccurate or poorly recorded, they get basic facts - like the colours of my bike and rucksack - wrong, and one Crimint entry finished in mid-sentence."'

WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST FIGHT IN PEACE

'Converging technology, transhumanism, and our future in the making. The cutting edge group known as transhumanists see a beautiful future brought about by artificial intelligence, life extension, and cybernetics. What one must realize before getting carried away with such utopian dreams is that transhumanism was born out of the elitist pseudo-science eugenics. This documentary provides vital information on the history of eugenics and its new cutting edge transformation.' -- Transhumanism is a eugenics cult. Well, yeah. The idea is to man-u-facture better slaves. This is what humans lust to do to each other. 'Twas ever thus.

'The European Commission is calling for a "common culture" of law enforcement to be developed across the EU and for a third of police officers – more than 50,000 in the UK alone – to be given training in European affairs within the next five years. A separate EU-funded research project, called Adabts – the Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behaviour and Threats in crowded Spaces – has received nearly £3 million. Its is based in Sweden but partners include the UK Home Office and BAE Systems. It is seeking to develop models of "suspicious behaviour" so these can be automatically detected using CCTV and other surveillance methods. The system would analyse the pitch of people's voices, the way their bodies move and track individuals within crowds.' -- FACECRIME. YOU SMILE. WE KNOW. YOU UNSMILE. WE KNOW. MAKE REPORT. SEND JOYCAMP. THIS WARN YOU.

THIS IS WHY WE CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS

#AGAINST -- Thomas Aquinas: "[In going beyond the boundaries of God] they are doing something great, if with surpassing curiosity and keenness they explore the whole mass of this body which we call the world; so great a pride is thus begotten, that one would think they dwelt in the very heavens about which they argue.” -- Lorenzo Scupoli: “They make an idol of their own understanding.” -- Paul Griffiths: “In a world where curiosity rules, unmasking curiosity as a destructive and offensive device ... amounts to nothing less than a ... radical critique of superficiality and constant distraction.” -- John Henry Newman: “In such persons reason acts almost as feebly and as impotently as in the madman: once fairly started on a subject, they have no power of self-control.” #FOR -- Pascal: “Curiosity is only vanity.” -- Jonathan Robinson: “What we are talking about is the desire to satisfy our curiosity on any and every conceivable subject that takes our fancy.” -- Amen to that.

'CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773, which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency. The new version would allow the president to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" relating to "non-governmental" computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat. Other sections of the proposal include a federal certification program for "cybersecurity professionals," and a requirement that certain computer systems and networks in the private sector be managed by people who have been awarded that license.' -- America Offline.

'There’s a powerful human urge to belong inside the group, to think like the majority, to lick the boss’s shoes, and to win the group’s approval by trashing dissenters. The strength of this urge to conform can silence even those who have good reason to think the majority is wrong. You’re an expert because all your peers recognize you as such. But if you start to get too far out of line with what your peers believe, they will look at you askance and start to withdraw the informal title of “expert” they have implicitly bestowed on you. Then you’ll bear the less comfortable label of “maverick,” which is only a few stops short of “scapegoat” or “pariah.”'

'Most of the e-books, videos, video games, and mobile apps that we buy these days day aren't really ours. They come to us with digital strings that stretch back to a single decider—Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or whomever else. Steve Jobs has confirmed that every iPhone routinely checks back with Apple to make sure the apps you've purchased are still kosher; Apple reserves the right to kill any app at any time for any reason. But why stop there? If Apple or Amazon can decide to delete stuff you've bought, then surely a court—or, to channel Orwell, perhaps even a totalitarian regime—could force them to do the same. Like a lot of others, I've predicted the Kindle is the future of publishing. Now we know what the future of book banning looks like, too.' -- B&

'"There exists," Cohn wrote, "...a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as ideas are churned out by crooks and half-educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant and superstitious. There are times when this underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, captures and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people, who thereupon take leave of sanity and responsibility. And it occasionally happens that this underworld becomes a political power and changes the course of history." -- ...they are driven as much by a psychological need as a totalitarian ideology. Their delusions impose a comforting coherence on the mess of life and randomness of death. By "suggesting that there is an explanation, that human agencies are powerful and that there is order rather than chaos," the conspiracy theorist places himself in a sophisticated elite that discerns connections where the multitude sees only happenstance.' -- Um, spot the 'coherence' -making?

"Distinctive brain patterns could become the latest subject of biometric scanning after EU researchers successfully tested technology to verify ­identities for security checks. The experiments, which also examined the potential of heart rhythms to authenticate individuals, were conducted under an EU-funded inquiry into biometric systems that could be deployed at airports, borders and in sensitive locations to screen out terrorist suspects. The holy grail of the biometrics industry is a scanning mechanism that is socially acceptable in an era of mass transit and 100 per cent accurate. Researchers are eager to produce 'non-contact' biometric systems that can check any individual's identity at a distance."

"An Al Qaeda representative says that claims the U.S. government was behind the attacks on Sept. 11th are demeaning to Al Qaeda."

'The official story seems to be that everyone knows the financial crisis represents a failure of the capitalist system, and now only a "gigantic program of economic defense" will save us. Sadly, it's all indicative of a bigger problem. The narrative itself is being shaped before our very eyes. Over time, it will come to be generally accepted as historical "fact." Our children will learn the stories of the financial collapse of 2008. And everything they will be told about its causes, the philosophical roots, the main players, it's prolonging, and even the reasons for the next 20 years of (inevitable) inflation will be lies. The fact that it was the Austrians — the heirs of Mises and Hayek — like Peter Schiff who publicly predicted the collapse (and were ridiculed for it) will largely get swept under the rug. That is, unless those of us who are actually interested in truth and liberty stand up right now and come together to defend it.' -- Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

'The London police have bested their own impressive record for insane and stupid anti-terrorism posters with a new range of signs advising Londoners to go through each others' trash-bins looking for "suspicious" chemical bottles, and to report on one another for "studying CCTV cameras."' -- Next it'll be anyone receiving 'instructions' on their mobiles.

'Cardinal Richelieu famously said: "If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." When all your words and actions can be saved for later examination, different rules have to apply. Society works precisely because conversation is ephemeral; because people forget, and because people don't have to justify every word they utter.'

'A lot of people get annoyed with Austrian economists because they tend to be so dogmatic (we prefer the term consistent) and because they cloak their strictly economic claims with self-righteousness (we prefer the term morality). After a good Austrian bashing of the latest call to steal taxpayer money and waste it on something that will make a given problem worse, the stumped critics will often shout, "Oh yeah? Well do you guys have a better idea?" In one sense, the critics are right when they ask, "Oh, so we should just sit back and do nothing and let the market fix itself?" Yes, that would be a perfectly good idea.' -- Nothing. And less.

'**Facebook is, he told me, studying “sentiment” behavior. It hasn’t yet used that research in its public service yet, but is looking to figure out if people are having a good day or bad day. He said that already his teams are able to sense when nasty news, like stock prices are headed down, is underway. He also told me that the sentiment engine notices a lot of “going out” kinds of messages on Friday afternoon and then notices a lot of “hungover” messages on Saturday morning. He’s not sure where that research will lead. We talked about how sentiment analysis might lead to a new kind of news display in Facebook. Knowing whether a story is positive or negative would let Facebook pick a good selection of both kinds of news, or maybe even let you choose whether you want to see only “happy” news.'

'What's going on? Normally, we expect society to progress, amassing deeper scientific understanding and basic facts every year. Knowledge only increases, right? Robert Proctor doesn't think so. A historian of science at Stanford, Proctor points out that when it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to information is reversed: Ignorance increases. He has developed a word inspired by this trend: agnotology. Derived from the Greek root agnosis, it is "the study of culturally constructed ignorance." As Proctor argues, when society doesn't know something, it's often because special interests work hard to create confusion. "People always assume that if someone doesn't know something, it's because they haven't paid attention or haven't yet figured it out," Proctor says. "But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth—or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what's true and what's not." -- *covers ears*

"A prosecutor said Minerva - who was rumored to be a retired financial market worker - is in fact a 30-year-old jobless man who only learned about foreign exchange markets through self-education." -- Because nobody can learn things for themselves; nobody can have an opinion without a university certificate to back it up. FFS!

'The MP said later it was "pleasing to see just how vigilant" the police had been.' -- Oh, the tyranny!

"UK police are hoping to one day develop a breathalyser-style tool for computers that could instantly flag up illegal activity on any PC it's attached to. McMurdie said such a tool could run on suspects' machines, identify illegal activity - such as credit card fraud or selling stolen goods online - and retrieve relevant evidence." -- How?

Blah on blah thoughtcrime. THIS WARN YOU.

"What are the risks of pooled consciousness to society and individuals? #people become slaves to public opinion, behave, have experiences because of what will go in their neural feed (already see this behavior in Facebook)"